Posts by alain williams

Chromium devs want the browser to talk to devices, computers directly via TCP, UDP. Obviously, nothing can go wrong

Re: It will certainly be shoved down our throats

Lots of money by those purveyors of malicious javascript. I don't have as much of value to be stolen as Experian but NoScript is staying activated in my browser.

Taiwan turfs out video streamers run by China’s web giants

So what will the rest of the world do ...

in 3 years time when China invades Taiwan ? Stand by tut-tutting as we have done with Hong Kong or start a war ? You might say are 24 million people worth a war ?

Neither would be pleasant, but we need to decide & act now so that China will not invade.

Australian regulator slams Google ‘misinformation’ in pay-for-news-fight

Re: Google News

Not sure if I should up or down vote.

Answer: No, I don't use Google news.

I listen to the radio & visit some news media web sites (not getting there via a search engine). Works well for me.

What I would like is objective & impartial news media. I am increasingly fed up with the spin being put on news stories and media setting agenda rather than clearly telling the stories.

How do you solve a problem like Privacy Shield? US and EU policymakers kick off discussions

Re: Store data in the EU

That is possible, but that US company would be breaking the law with potentially quite severe repercussions. You'd imagine a company would think twice before they take that risk.

Thought 1: Will we get caught ?

Thought 2: Has anyone else been caught ?

Made in China? Not for much longer, reckons Foxconn boss

I don't suppose ...

that Apple, Samsung, etc, would look at the human rights record of any countries that the chose to buy kit from.

.

No, I did think that that was too much to ask.

UK.gov to propose new rules for online political campaigns after last election marred by an avalanche of fake news

So in comes nudge political advertising

A radio play, an advert about butter, football commentary, ... all ostensibly non political can contain subtle comments that form opinions about what a political party is saying. It will be cheaper as well: no buying of air-time or bill boards; all that you need is a friendly author, copywriter, ...

All very hard for the Electoral Commission to prove wrong doing.

What are you gonna do? Give me detention? Illinois schools ban pyjamas in online classes

No bed rule

Unfortunately I suspect that for some of the poorer pupils this is the only place that they can call their own.

NASA to stop using names like 'Eskimo Nebula' and 're-examine' what it calls cosmic objects

Ban all Homonyms!

The only way of stopping this madness is to ban all uses of the same word to mean more than one thing. If everything is described by a different word then nobody will get into trouble for accidentally making someone feel uncomfortable.

I wish that it were only this simple.

First alligators, then dogs, now Basil Fawlty is trying to standardise social distancing measures

Re: Ministry of...

The Ministry of Silly Walks was aired in 1970 - at which time distances would have been measured in feet - so: each pace would have been about 6'

First rule of Ransomware Club is do not pay the ransom, but it looks like Carlson Wagonlit Travel didn't get the memo

Writable backups

Any backup should be read only. You can add new stuff to the backup but removal should be very hard.

Aviation regulator outlines fixes that will get the 737 MAX flying again

Low passenger numbers

Would that be because of COVID-19 or reluctance to board a 737 MAX ?

Amazon gets green-light to blow $10bn on 3,000+ internet satellites. All so Americans can shop more on Amazon

Use of personal data ?

Amazon will know who the subscribers are, will monitory which web sites they are looking at and send targeted email telling them of 'Special Offers' to keep them sending money to Amazon.

Chinese ambassador to UK threatens to withdraw Huawei, £3bn investment if comms giant banned from building 5G

Does the Chinese ambassador think ...

that by throwing his toys out of the pram that we will suddenly realise that Chinese companies are super reliable and good partners for important projects ?

I get an image of a 3 year old stamping his feet in temper tantrum.

Face masks hamper the spread of coronavirus. Know what else they hamper? Facial-recognition systems (except China's)

Rules on face mask design ?

It will be interesting to see if rules are introduced that restrict how face masks are made:

* how big they are, how much of the face they cover

* what patterns can be printed on them. Patterns can confuse recognition systems

Also which countries make the restrictions.

Bill Gates debunks 'coronavirus vaccine is my 5G mind control microchip implant' conspiracy theory

What if MS had not become dominant ?

It might be sub-standard but it has powered the PC revolution and even the wider IT revolution. Could something better have done that?

It was a product of its time - if MS DOS/Windows had not appeared then something else would have.

I remember SCO ODT was quite nice & better than what MS had some 30 years ago; the unfortunate thing was that it cost far too much for widespread adoption -- because they had licensed many components from elsewhere. Pity.

VMware to stop describing hardware as ‘male’ and ‘female’ in new terminology guide

Re: Last time I checked ...

If something is stopped then I expect to be able to restart it. I do not expect that if it is killed.

New Google rules mandate Android 'Poundland' Edition, Go, for sub-2GB RAM phones once Android 11 is out

Does Go come without the non-removable facebook app ?

If so it would be worth going for, as long as it lets me tether my laptop.

Microsoft accused of sharing data of Office 365 business subscribers with Facebook and its app devs

What about non-business users ?

This article was all about business users, what about home/personal users ? I suspect that Microsoft sold their personal information as well ?

Me: happy to use Libreoffice on my Linux boxes but unhappy to realise that I have likely had my private information harvested from anything that my O-365 using friends have recorded about me.

The GDPR talks about clarity in agreements - but I doubt that most O-365 users are aware. Time for a huge fine from the data protection people.

Nokia 5310: Retro feature phone shamelessly panders to nostalgia, but is charming enough to be forgiven

Re: Is it 4G, and can it work as a wifi hotspot?

Unfortunately it appears not to and only does 2G. Pity as otherwise it would sound perfect.

Beware: Nokia released a 5310 in 2007 - this is not the same thing, but looks similar.

Everything must go! Distributors clear shelves of ALL notebooks in Q2, even ones gathering dust over last 12 months

Web cams also

disappear as soon as they hit the shelves.

Trump gloats, telcos weep, and China is furious: How things stand following UK's decision to rip out Huawei

When politics meets technical decisions

From the point of view of today's technical assessment this is the wrong decision. This assumes a benign China - us techies don't like to think that people are nasty (with a few exceptions).

From a much longer political decision of international geopolitics you might get a different answer: depending on how you value human liberties and your view of Chinese political ambitions.

If our UK politicians have taken a long view I am very pleased at this rare event - irrespective of them being right or wrong. If they are just bending over for Trump - I am not pleased.

UK smacks Huawei with banhammer: Buying firm's 5G gear illegal from year's end, mobile networks ordered to rip out all next-gen kit by 2027

Re: Logic?

And this is about security you say?

Security has always been the excuse; this is more about trade and politics. Having said that I know little about the latest GCQH report.

UK advertising watchdog raps ruler on O2's hand over misleading ads for iPad and Surface Pro deals

After 2 wraps in 3 months ...

BT/... should be obliged to have all adverts for the next year approved by the ASA before they run - paying a fee for this.

Attempts to pull the wool should then quickly stop.

Social media giants move to defy Hong Kong's new national security law

Re: Not only

Sure, but US won't jail you because you said California should go independent

Let me just change a few letters:

Sure, but Spain won't jail you because you said Catalonia should go independent

We need to always worry about erosion of freedom of speech.

The equation to be evaluated ...

by Google, Facebook & pals is increasingly looking like: China or The Rest of the World. If China pushes too hard they might find themselves cut adrift.

Good from the point of view of preserving freedoms, but this would also increase the isolation of those who live in the totalitarian state that we call China.

I do not know what the answer is.

Remember: it is not just China, other oppressive states also exist.

University ordered to stop running women-only job ads

Just the academic staff ?

Is there also positive discrimination to achieve an even men/women balance in:

* janitors, gardeners

* security staff

* porters

* buildings/site maintenance

Linux kernel coders propose inclusive terminology coding guidelines, note: 'Arguments about why people should not be offended do not scale'

Do non African slaves not matter ?

The email includes:

The African slave trade was a brutal system of human misery deployed at global scale.

So: do slaves (past or present) from other places not matter ?

OK: I understand why Dan wrote that - he is reacting to the current brouhaha - but it is easy to lose sight of the bigger picture when under pressure from on group.

July? British government could decide to boot Chinese giant Huawei from the UK's networks by this month

Huawei should not be the last ...

The Chinese ambassador has been saying that we must not interfere with internal Chinese affairs, but how can we ignore human abuses in other countries ? Should we let Primark ignore working conditions in Bangladesh from where it buys its clothes or slave labour in Chinese prisons ? No: public opinion is making them change.

Likewise: we must not ignore what China is doing to fellow humans.

I have met Uighur Muslims, I know people from Hong Kong - but even if I did not how could I ignore oppression of people even if they are 10,000 miles away ?

We must send a message to Xi Jinping that we do not like the bully that he has become. He is emboldened by their burgeoning economy - so we can express our disapproval by buying less of their goods and services.

Other nations should do likewise: a school ground bully will just dominate/terrorrise one child who stands up to him but if many do he will be defeated.

I recognize that some of the UK's history is not good, but that does not mean that we should turn a blind eye.

China is not the only rogue nation but is, I believe, the most dangerous.

Beijing's tightening grip on Hong Kong could put region's future as an up-and-coming tech hub in jeopardy

Re: "we need clarity on what the laws will involve before we can decide anything"

I do not think that you understand how dictatorships work.

US govt: Julian Assange tried to recruit hacker to steal hush-hush dirt and we should know – the hacker was an informant

A lot of effort to get Assange

How much effort is the USA putting in to prosecute those whom he exposed ?

There are DDoS attacks, then there's this 809 million packet-per-second tsunami Akamai says it just caught

Re: And the next step...

Can Akamai pass the IP addresses from which they got the attack to the various ISP's, so that the ISP's can contact the associated end user and suggest they give their machines a thorough cleaning?

What they need to do is to speak to a few of the ISPs and get traffic logs for some of these PCs. Try to work out the command & control addresses - these are the real ones to chase - not the hapless users running a compromised Microsoft machine. Maybe examine a few of these machine to see what malware they have.

It will be interesting to see who the botnet controllers are: criminals or governments (mind you sometimes they are the same thing).

Ampere smacks the ball over the net, back at Marvell: Our Altra Max cloud processor will have 128 Arm cores

Quoting speed in GHz ...

does not really allow a good comparison. Especially when different machine architectures are being compared.

SPEC was used a while back - is that still good ?

CERN puts two new atom-smashers on its shopping list. One to make Higgs Bosons, then a next-gen model six times more energetic than the LHC

Re: Funding

The money that they are asking for is a small fraction of what we give the men in green uniforms.

I know which one I regard as being of better value.

Internet blackout of Myanmar States that are home to ethnic minorities enters second year

Re: Attempted genocide of the Rohingya

Everyone's inaction is appalling.

IR35 tax reforms for UK freelancers glide through committee stage: D-Day set for 6 April 2021

Who is paying the right tax ?

After IR35 how many of those consultants will be paying the correct tax ?

I am thinking of those who are working away from home for a few months but cannot claim travel & hotels against tax - if they were doing the same but working for a large company they would have this paid for them by the company which would claim it against income.

Ryzen shine, kids: Huawei buries AMD silicon in latest laptop, hopes to lure 'young professionals'

Re: 3550U

Considering the lifetime of Laptops is now more like 5 years, this year's CPU will be outdated for 80% of the machines life as well. Additionally, the single thread performance of modern CPUs is no longer growing rapidly.

Your criteria for buying something seem to be "because it is new"; should it not be "it does what I need". You might need a top of the range high powered laptop but I doubt that most people do. This machine would do me nicely except that I would like a smaller screen to fit easier in my ruck sack, I have a large screen at home - I do not need one when out & about.

See: we all have different needs.

If Fairphone can support a 5-year-old handset, the other vendors could too. Right?

Re: Consumers aren’t being served by Android

The improvements are small increments, nothing revolutionary has really benefited general consumers for years.

Is that not the definition of a mature product: it does what it is supposed to so no major developments are needed ?

When you get a mature product what should happen is that the manufacturers start to compete by providing good prices and service. Most 'phone vendors do not do this.

Adobe about to pull the plug on Creative Cloud freebie 'at-home' access for students

Are Adobe products the only ones ...

that can be used to achieve what the students are learning ?

If there are alternatives then should the universities not be teaching general principles which is illustrated by using Adobe & other products ?

If they just teach Adobe products then they are delivering training, not education. The result will be graduates who can only work if they have Adobe products - this is not good. Adobe will achieve ever greater lock-in and the competition wither.

If universities teach one product because it is easier - then they are being lazy.

Whose side you on, Nominet? Registry floods .co.uk owners with begging emails to renew unwanted .uk domains

+1 mythic beasts

I have no affiliation with them other than a happy customer - domain names only.

Huawei's latest smartphone for the UK market costs £1,299. And yes, that's without Google apps

Re: Privacy

It all depends on who you think will do you more harm.

US senators propose $22bn fund for new fabs on American soil because making stuff is better than designing stuff

Re: Damn socialists

This is why it is being done through the Defense Department as, presumably, they hope to skate around WTO rules which provide for exceptions on the grounds of national security.

When open source isn't enough: Fancy a de-Googled Chromium? How about some Microsoft-free VS Code?

Re: Things we turned off

I've gone through about:config and updated the Mozilla URLs in a similar fashion, by munging the end of the hostname.

and there is a lot of them, + google ones & others.

A 99.9% of web users are, I suspect, unaware of these.Thus, surely, they are illegal under GDPR informed consent provisions. I would be very surprised if they did not record the requesting IP (ie user's home) address and various other things - many of which could identify the user, or at least start to.

Another set of GDPR breaking exfiltration of user data are things like google analytics - surely a web site should ask permission first to ask consent which "must be freely given, specific, informed and unambiguous" - no web sites that I know of do so (including El Reg).

However: I doubt that our chocolate box ICO will bother.

Huawei launches UK charm offensive: We've provided 2G, 3G and 4G for 20 years, and you're worried about 5G?

Re: The bigger issue is rising Chinese power

I always reckoned that we should have helped them move to the Falkland Islands. ½ way between Africa & S America - those enterprising Hong Kong people would have made something big of it.

The bigger issue is rising Chinese power

What with so much money going there the increasing economic clout gives them increasing political influence and confidence.

A big concern that I have about China is that it will use this power in ways that I do not like, look at the problems of the Uighur Muslims, recent freedom restrictions in Hong Kong, rhetoric about Taiwan, surveillance of their own population, lack of freedom of speech, ... President Xi Jinping cannot be removed at the ballot box which, IMHO, makes him a dictator of what looks like an increasingly totalitarian state. All of that worries me and I think that we should push back before it gets unstoppable.

I am not saying that Western governments do not have their own problems, our imperial past & some of what the CIA have done is shameful, currently heighligthened black problems but at least I could walk down Whitehall with a placard that said "Bollocks to Boris" without ''disappearing''.

I will not deny a certain amount of preferring 'my lot/friends' to another grouping.

One way of slowing them is to not give them so much money: eg by buying European telecomms kit. It would also benefit employment over here and improve supply chain security. I think that this is part of what is behind the Huawei debacle - although our politicians are coy about saying so.

Xiaomi Redmi Note 9 Pro: £250 mobe still able to deliver value in a brutally competitive niche

Re: Please El Reg ...

If I want Internet connectivity -- I'll switch that on for a few minutes.

The screen: the 'phone is in my pocket for most of the time, screen switched off.

Please El Reg ...

when you review these things do remember that some of us are not interested in running something like call of duty. We want a 'phone and one of the really important things is battery life.

afforded at least two days' worth of usage between charges

Presumably that was with wifi, bluetooth, GPS, Internet, etc switched on - these are also battery suckers. It would be really useful to be told how long the battery lasts with just 2G/3G switched on. Another time to quote is if you want 4G/5G would be good as well. I do realise that how long depends on local signal strength - so please say that.

Yes: some do want all the services, but some do not.

Smart fridges are cool, but after a few short years you could be stuck with a big frosty brick in the kitchen

Re: Bimby

Maybe it is rubbish - but she can brag to her mates who will then try to keep up with the Tutkins'!

Re: A solution looking for a problem

If anyone wants music in the kitchen, they find a laptop and bring it in.

I have a lot of music in my kitchen - I use something that you might have heard of: a 'radio'.

It works really well; super modern - it is a DAB radio. Tuned to either: Classic FM, BBC Radio 4 or Radio 3.

There are 2 dates on these things

1) the date when it will no longer receive s/ware updates to protect it from the latest drive by attack

2) the date when the servers that it speaks to are switched off

Neither of these is explained in the point-of-sale blurb.

If you ask you might be told of a 'lifetime' - which likely started a year or two ago when the model was released - so what you have left can be quite short.

Quite apart from me not being able to understand *why* I would want something that costs more and blabs personal information to the manufacturer; I would never buy something where (2) those servers were not mine - prolly some R-pi in my house.

Thankfully there will always be a market for cheaper non IoT stuff that will be wanted by those who are not rich enough to be stupid enough to buy these nasties.

Singapore to accelerate digitalisation of COVID-kicked economy

A good excuse

to be able to track all payments.